Story rejection

[gunhilltrain]

Okay, now I'm curious. Although I'm not particularly drawn to BDSM, why not share those 350 words here so we can provide you with a fair opinion? However, I must warn you in advance: while the LW crowd may have a notorious reputation for commentary, they are like lovable kittens compared to some of the vicious cannibals around.

Around AH you mean? I'm reminded of "The Terminus" episodes of The Walking Dead. Although those cannibals were not zombies. The had turned cannibalism into an industrial process, sort of like a meat-packing plant.

 

[Voboy]

He could PM or contact someone via the email option. Although, the content doesn't seem to the issue; it's the length.

Regardless, I think one of the worst things that can happen in the AH is for people to start coming here and posting their whole stories to threads.

Yuck.

 

[Duleigh]

Hi everyone. I've now had a story rejected twice. The problem being it is only 350 words. The story has a BDSM setting in the form of a feghoot. For those who don't know, a feghoot is a very short story all designed to finish up with a very contrived and very horrible pun. You can google feghoot up, there is a wikipedia entry on it.

In my second submission attempt I tried explaining this but the moderators either weren’t listening or weren’t interested. To pad the story out to some arbitrary length would actually detract from it and I'm not prepared to do that. It would wreck the point of it being a feghoot. There is poetry that length and that is OK. And I feel this is denying the readership the fun of reading the story and being hit with the pun.

I'm very disappointed by this decision but don’t know what to do about it.

Here's what you do,

Option A: you write a 400 word introduction explaining a feghoot and what it takes to make 350 words into a feghoot then tack it on in italics

Option B: You add 400 words to the story

Option C: You reformat it to look like a poem and submit it as a poem

Option D: Self Publish

Literotica is very clear, and they were clear with you twice, their limit on a STORY is 750 words, I even moderated a 750 word challenge this winter, you should have joined in. There is no limit on a poem, I submitted a simple limerick (Simple - HA! I dare YOU to write a clean limerick that you can recite to the pastor's wife that contains the word Nantucket!) and my limerick was posted.

ALSO - A FEGHOOT IS NOT JUST A STORY, every definition I found clearly said that a Feghoot has a definite construction and a definite ending, here's the definition:

A feghoot (also known as a story pun or poetic story joke) is a humorous short story or vignette ending in a pun (typically a play on a well-known phrase), where the story contains sufficient context to recognize the punning humor.

You can't just throw 350 words together and call it a feghoot, and I can think of a few ways to crack a pun in the BDSM world, but not a lot. If your feghoot is that pure, don't forget the names Ferdinand Feghoot, Grendel Briarton, and Reginald Bretnor.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Regardless, I think one of the worst things that can happen in the AH is for people to start coming here and posting their whole stories to threads.

Yuck.

Agree. It would also breach a fundamental Lit policy - all stories must be vetted before they go up on the site. There's the three paragraph rule for a reason - fair use to get advice in something, not for "whole stories".

 

[djrip]

Agree. It would also breach a fundamental Lit policy - all stories must be vetted before they go up on the site. There's the three paragraph rule for a reason - fair use to get advice in something, not for "whole stories".

This 350 word story might only be three paragraphs...

 

[ElectricBlue]

This 350 word story might only be three paragraphs...

True, but it would be stretching the spirit of the policy.

The OP just needs to write 750 words and be done with it. There's no need for anything clever.

Besides, the 750 worders don't go down so well with readers, so can you imagine the reaction when they only get half a pint?

 

[djrip]

Maybe he should just put it on t-shirts.

 

[PennameWombat]

That sounds like an interesting concept, any link to that?

It's not a formal thing, just a technique Ogg uses for some of his works (re: 15 stories of 50 words to make up a 750 word submission.) This is a mention in an AH thread
https://forum.literotica.com/threads/whats-a-nice-story-length.1576144/post-95898415

To find some, go to his page and they're mentioned in the descriptions.
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=129447&page=submissions

 

[RejectReality]

I posted a collection of my micros from another site the same way Ogg does his 15x50. Of course, I only needed 8 for my 100 word micros.

They don't even have to be connected stories. If you're interested in writing to a specific form, you can collect a couple of them and release them as an anthology. It may not do gangbusters, but you'll at least reach the minimum requirement of 750 words. I just put mine in Erotic Couplings, since it's such a grab bag category that some fairly disparate themes didn't really throw readers off.

 

[Andrew2023]

....You can't just throw 350 words together and call it a feghoot, and I can think of a few ways to crack a pun in the BDSM world...

"Glenda had already faded off into sub-space when Leon slipped the cool, polished, and well lubricated feghook in her waiting asshole, seated it, and tied its cord to her hair."

30 or 31 words depending on how your software counts hyphens.

 

[RejectReality]

I sort of do this ass-backwards. My titles are the puns and the story leads into it.

 

[TravellerInTime]

I’m extremely disappointed by all of this.

To have a story rejected on such trivial grounds. To be faced with the rigid inflexibility of the moderators is galling.

I refuse to bastardize a story by padding it out to meet some arbitrary word count. And I find it really distasteful the thought of conniving my way around the limits as some have suggested.

I have almost twenty more stories I was planning to put up. The largest being on the borderline of novella/novel. But now I've lost interest. At my age I don’t need the aggravation of this.

Adieu.

 

[djrip]

I’m extremely disappointed by all of this.

To have a story rejected on such trivial grounds. To be faced with the rigid inflexibility of the moderators is galling.

I refuse to bastardize a story by padding it out to meet some arbitrary word count. And I find it really distasteful the thought of conniving my way around the limits as some have suggested.

I have almost twenty more stories I was planning to put up. The largest being on the borderline of novella/novel. But now I've lost interest. At my age I don’t need the aggravation of this.

Adieu.

Posting in poetry, or combining with another too short story, don't seem conniving, or particularly distasteful, to me. To each their own. Godspeed.

 

[Andrew2023]

I’m extremely disappointed by all of this.

To have a story rejected on such trivial grounds. To be faced with the rigid inflexibility of the moderators is galling.

I refuse to bastardize a story by padding it out to meet some arbitrary word count. And I find it really distasteful the thought of conniving my way around the limits as some have suggested.

I have almost twenty more stories I was planning to put up. The largest being on the borderline of novella/novel. But now I've lost interest. At my age I don’t need the aggravation of this.

Adieu.

Gosh ... if you submitted half of those twenty stories together it would be ... what ... 3000 words?

 

[KeithD]

I’m extremely disappointed by all of this.

To have a story rejected on such trivial grounds. To be faced with the rigid inflexibility of the moderators is galling.

There are no "moderators" plural for the stories. The discussion board moderators don't operate on the story side and there is only one submissions editor on the story side--Laurel. Just a point of order on that.

Sorry, but there's nothing wrong with a story site having a minimum number of words requirement. So, you have no sympathy on that.

 

[djrip]

Gosh ... if you submitted half of those twenty stories together it would be ... what ... 3000 words?

He said the largest was novella length. I just don't know why you would write 20 stories ranging up to novella length and then get so irritated about having to post the 350 word one in poetry that you just give up on the whole thing.

 

[KeithD]

He said the largest was novella length. I just don't know why you would write 20 stories ranging up to novella length and then get so irritated about having to post the 350 word one in poetry that you just give up on the whole thing.

But, with the attitude, why care what he thinks?

 

[ElectricBlue]

He said the largest was novella length. I just don't know why you would write 20 stories ranging up to novella length and then get so irritated about having to post the 350 word one in poetry that you just give up on the whole thing.

Easily aggravated chappie, that one. Comes here complaining, gets some advice, it's not what he wants to hear, goes off in a huff. That's the fourth one this year and look, it's April. Shrug.

 

[djrip]

But, with the attitude, why care what he thinks?

Just curious

 

[MelissaBaby]

I’m extremely disappointed by all of this.

To have a story rejected on such trivial grounds. To be faced with the rigid inflexibility of the moderators is galling.

I refuse to bastardize a story by padding it out to meet some arbitrary word count. And I find it really distasteful the thought of conniving my way around the limits as some have suggested.

I have almost twenty more stories I was planning to put up. The largest being on the borderline of novella/novel. But now I've lost interest. At my age I don’t need the aggravation of this.

Adieu.

Oh, shit. I better call my broker and dump all my Literotica stock!

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oh, shit. I better call my broker and dump all my Literotica stock!

I'm sort of thinking I missed out on a recipe for haggis. Now I'll never know.

 

[Voboy]

I’m extremely disappointed by all of this.

To have a story rejected on such trivial grounds. To be faced with the rigid inflexibility of the moderators is galling.

I refuse to bastardize a story by padding it out to meet some arbitrary word count. And I find it really distasteful the thought of conniving my way around the limits as some have suggested.

I have almost twenty more stories I was planning to put up. The largest being on the borderline of novella/novel. But now I've lost interest. At my age I don’t need the aggravation of this.

Adieu.

...wow.

 

[EmilysRopes]

I just had a similar issue. I had a 650 word story rejected. I made it longer, and in my opinion worse, by stretching it to 850 words. It may not have been worth publishing anyway but the rule definitely didn't improve it.

I was reading an intertesting thread earlier of 100 word stories, some of them very good to my mind. Are they breaking Literotica etiquette by publishing in the forums?

Would a separate category/area for short stories be worthwhile (yes I will DM the owner)?

 

[onehitwanda]

An example that proves this: Nate the Snake

Oh my god, fuck you.
Reminds me very strongly of

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2q4ijx

 

[ElectricBlue]

I just had a similar issue. I had a 650 word story rejected. I made it longer, and in my opinion worse, by stretching it to 850 words. It may not have been worth publishing anyway but the rule definitely didn't improve it.

I was reading an intertesting thread earlier of 100 word stories, some of them very good to my mind. Are they breaking Literotica etiquette by publishing in the forums?

Would a separate category/area for short stories be worthwhile (yes I will DM the owner)?

I think that thread has been running for a while, so it's tacitly endorsed by the site. My guess is the site keeps a watching eye on content compliance, or it's down to the thread participants to self-police.